#2024 New York Elections

[justinspoliticalcorner]

Sophie Hurwitz at Mother Jones:

In the most expensive primary in the history of the United States House of Representatives, Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-N.Y.), a prominent progressive in Congress, lost to George Latimer, a moderate who well-known Democrats had backed in the final weeks of the race.    The center of the campaign was Bowman’s relatively outspoken stance on Israel’s war on Gaza. In mid-October of 2023, Bowman became one of the first members of Congress to publicly support a ceasefire. Soon after, Latimer, a suburban moderate—with a habit of posting on Facebook—entered the race, and pitched himself to more conservative Democratic-party voters. He was backed aggressively by pro-Israel groups.

AdImpact, an organization tracking political campaign spending, reported earlier this week that nearly $25 million was spent in this race. 61 percent of that money—nearly $15 million—came from a PAC affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee called the United Democracy Project. UDP spent most of the money on ads attacking Bowman. Bowman’s position on the US’s alliance with Israel changed after a November 2021 trip organized by the advocacy organization J Street that took him to the West Bank city of Hebron. Bowman—a former middle-school principal—was particularly affected by his interaction with a group of Palestinian schoolchildren. “There are streets they cannot walk and places they cannot go, simply because they are Palestinian,” he wrote on Instagram at the time. “When I asked about their dreams, their answer was simple: freedom. The occupation must end.” He went on to co-sponsor a resolution with Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) that would recognize the Nakba. Now, eight months into Israel’s unrelenting war on Gaza, more children have been killed than in the previous four years of global conflict.

Latimer entered the race in early December, presenting himself as a centrist candidate. He said he would, for example, support Biden’s efforts towards a temporary “humanitarian pause,” but would not support Bowman’s “unconditional ceasefire.” Bowman has consistently called the killing of over 37,400 Gazans and the starvation of over a million a genocide. Latimer instead states on his website that he believes in Israel’s right to self-defense and is an advocate for a “two-state solution.”

A major win for AIPAC and a big loss for the left, as George Latimer knocks Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) out of Congress in the #NY16 Democratic Primary. #NYPrimary

See Also:

HuffPost: Rep. Jamaal Bowman, Progressive Israel Critic, Loses Reelection Bid

[reasonsforhope]

Former President Donald Trump was found guilty of 34 felonies by the jury in his "hush money" trial in New York on Thursday, making him the first former president in U.S. history to be convicted of a crime.

The jury, composed of 12 Manhattan residents, found that Trump illegally falsified business records to cover up a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels before the 2016 election. They found him guilty on all counts on their second day of deliberations.

The presumptive Republican nominee for president is now also a convicted felon, a label that could reverberate across the electorate in the months between now and Election Day in November.

The verdict was handed down in the same Manhattan courtroom where Trump has been on trial for the past six weeks. Trump stared at each juror as they confirmed their vote to convict and angrily denounced the decision in the hallway outside the courtroom, vowing to fight the conviction.

Jurors sided with prosecutors who said that Trump authorized the plan to falsify checks and related records in an effort to prevent voters from learning of an alleged sexual encounter with Daniels. Prosecutors from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg's office said the conspiracy spanned his 2016 campaign and continued well into his first year in the White House. Trump denied having sex with Daniels and pleaded not guilty.

Justice Juan Merchan set a sentencing date of July 11, just four days before the start of the Republican National Convention, where Trump will be formally nominated as the party's standard-bearer. He could face up to four years in prison and a $5,000 fine for each count, but Merchan has broad discretion when imposing a sentence, and could limit the punishment to a fine, probation, home confinement or other options...

The Biden campaign warned that former Trump's conviction doesn't prevent him from winning another term in the White House from a legal standpoint. 

"There is still only one way to keep Donald Trump out of the Oval Office: at the ballot box. Convicted felon or not, Trump will be the Republican nominee for president," the campaign's communications director Michael Tyler said in a statement.

-via CBS News, May 30, 2024. Live updates: 7:36 pm, 7:23 pm Eastern Time

--

Note: Even if Trump gets reelected, he cannot pardon himself in this case, because this is a state-level conviction. The president can only pardon people convicted of federal crimes, not people convicted by the states. (x, x)

[jackass-democrats]

Truckers For Trump.

Watch all the socialist democrat's heads explode in the comments 😂 TDS has destroyed more democrat lives than any of their drugs.

As always, never buy anything made in china. Don't ever trust a democrat and NEVER leave your child alone with one.

[laughingsquid]

Man Dressed As a Ballot Box Performs Election Themed Stand Up Comedy on the New York City Subway

[scarletcarmensmith]

Q: What's your message to Joe Biden?

Union Worker: “F*ck you.”

🔥

[chibikittens]

More good news, NY successfully passed prop 1

“This proposal amends Article 1, Section 11 of the New York Constitution. Section 11 now protects against unequal treatment based on race, color, creed, and religion. The proposal will amend the act to also protect against unequal treatment based on ethnicity, national origin, age, disability, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, pregnancy, and pregnancy outcomes, as well as reproductive healthcare and autonomy. The amendment allows laws to prevent or undo past discrimination.”

[gamer2002]

It's (D)ifferent

[deadpresidents]

On the cliffs of Normandy, in a small holding area, the President of the United States was looking out at the English Channel. It was only six weeks ago, on the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings, and President Biden had just finished his remarks at the American cemetery atop Omaha Beach. Guests had been congratulating him on the speech, but he didn't want to talk about himself. The moment was not about him; it was about the men who had fought and died there. "Today feels so large," he told me. "This may sound strange -- and I don't mean it to -- but when I was out there, I felt the honor of it, the sanctity of it. To speak for the American people, to speak over those graves, it's a profound thing." He turned from the view over the beaches and gestured back toward the war dead. "You want to do right by them, by the country."

Mr. Biden has spent a lifetime trying to do right by the nation, and he did so in the most epic of ways when he chose to end his campaign for re-election. His decision is one of the most remarkable acts of leadership in our history, an act of self-sacrifice that places him in the company of George Washington who also stepped away from the presidency. To put something ahead of one's immediate desires -- to give, rather than to try to take -- is perhaps the most difficult thing for any human being to do. And Mr. Biden has done just that.

To be clear: Mr. Biden is my friend, and it has been a privilege to help him when I can. Not because I am a Democrat -- I belong to neither party and have voted for both Democrats and Republicans -- but because I believe him to be a defender of the Constitution and a public servant of honor and of grace at a time when extreme forces threaten the nation. I do not agree with everything he has done or wanted to do in terms of policy. But I know him to be a good man, a patriot and a president who has met challenges all too similar to those Abraham Lincoln faced. Here is the story I believe history will tell of Joe Biden. With American democracy in an hour of maximum danger in Donald Trump's presidency, Mr. Biden stepped in the breach. He staved off an authoritarian threat at home, rallied the world against autocrats abroad, laid the foundations for decades of prosperity, managed the end of a once-in-a-century pandemic, successfully legislated on vital issues of climate and infrastructure and has conducted a presidency worthy of the greatest of his predecessors. History and fate brought him to the pinnacle in a late season in his life, and in the end, he respected fate -- and he respected the American people.

It is, of course, an incredibly difficult moment. Highs and lows, victories and defeats, joy and pain: It has been ever thus for Mr. Biden. In the distant autumn of 1972, he experienced the most exhilarating of hours -- election to the United States Senate at the age of 29. He was no scion; he earned it. The darkness fell: His wife and daughter were killed in an automobile accident that seriously injured his two sons, Beau and Hunter. But he endured, found purpose in the pain, became deeper, wiser, more empathetic. Through the decades, two presidential campaigns imploded, and in 2015 his son Beau, a lawyer and wonderfully promising young political figure, died of brain cancer after serving in Iraq.

Such tragedy would have broken many lesser men. Mr. Biden, however, never gave up, never gave in, never surrendered the hope that a fallen, frail and fallible world could be made better, stronger and more whole if people could summon just enough goodness and enough courage to build rather than tear down. Character, as the Greeks first taught us, is destiny, and Mr. Biden's character is both a mirror and a maker of his nation's. Like Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, he is optimistic, resilient and kind, a steward of American greatness, a love of the great game of politics and, at heart, a hopeless romantic about the country that has given him so much.

Nothing bears out this point as well as his decision to let history happen in the 2024 election. Not matter how much people say that this was inevitable after the debate in Atlanta last month, there was nothing foreordained about an American President ending his political career for the sake of his country and his party. By surrendering the possibility of enduring in the seat of ultimate power, Mr. Biden has taught us a landmark lesson in patriotism, humility and wisdom.

Now the question comes to the rest of us. What will we the people do? We face the most significant of choices. Mr. Roosevelt framed the war whose dead Mr. Biden commemorated at Normandy in June as a battle between democracy and dictatorship. It is not too much to say that we, too, have what Mr. Roosevelt called a "rendezvous with destiny" at home and abroad. Mr. Biden has put country above self, the Constitution above personal ambition, the future of democracy above temporal gain. It is up to us to follow his lead.

-- "Joe Biden, My Friend and an American Hero" by Jon Meacham, New York Times, July 22, 2024.

[contemplatingoutlander]

That the Editorial Board of the premier U.S. newspaper of record is finally warning about Donald Trump is significant. As such, this is a gift 🎁 link so that those who want to read the entire editorial can do so, even if they don't subscribe to The New York Times. Below are some excerpts:

As president, [Trump] wielded power carelessly and often cruelly and put his ego and his personal needs above the interests of his country. Now, as he campaigns again, his worst impulses remain as strong as ever — encouraging violence and lawlessness, exploiting fear and hate for political gain, undermining the rule of law and the Constitution, applauding dictators — and are escalating as he tries to regain power. He plots retribution, intent on eluding the institutional, legal and bureaucratic restraints that put limits on him in his first term. Our purpose at the start of the new year, therefore, is to sound a warning. Mr. Trump does not offer voters anything resembling a normal option of Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, big government or small. He confronts America with a far more fateful choice: between the continuance of the United States as a nation dedicated to “the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” and a man who has proudly shown open disdain for the law and the protections and ideals of the Constitution. [...] It is instructive in the aftermath of that administration to listen to the judgments of some of these officials on the president they served. John Kelly, a chief of staff to Mr. Trump, called him the “most flawed person I’ve ever met,” someone who could not understand why Americans admired those who sacrificed their lives in combat. Bill Barr, who served as attorney general, and Mark Esper, a former defense secretary, both said Mr. Trump repeatedly put his own interests over those of the country. Even the most loyal and conservative of them all, Vice President Mike Pence, who made the stand that helped provoke Mr. Trump and his followers to insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, saw through the man: “On that day, President Trump also demanded that I choose between him and the Constitution,” he said.

[See more under the cut.]

There will not be people like these in the White House should Mr. Trump be re-elected. The former president has no interest in being restrained, and he has surrounded himself with people who want to institutionalize the MAGA doctrine. According to reporting by the Times reporters Maggie Haberman, Charlie Savage and Jonathan Swan, Mr. Trump and his ideological allies have been planning for a second Trump term for many months already. Under the name Project 2025, one coalition of right-wing organizations has produced a thick handbook and recruited thousands of potential appointees in preparation for an all-out assault on the structures of American government and the democratic institutions that acted as checks on Mr. Trump’s power. [...] Mr. Trump has made clear his conviction that only “losers” accept legal, institutional or even constitutional constraints. He has promised vengeance against his political opponents, whom he has called “vermin” and threatened with execution. This is particularly disturbing at a time of heightened concern about political violence, with threats increasing against elected officials of both parties. He has repeatedly demonstrated a deep disdain for the First Amendment and the basic principles of democracy, chief among them the right to freely express peaceful dissent from those in power without fear of retaliation, and he has made no secret of his readiness to expand the powers of the presidency, including the deployment of the military and the Justice Department, to have his way. [...] Re-electing Mr. Trump would present serious dangers to our Republic and to the world. This is a time not to sit out but instead to re-engage. We appeal to Americans to set aside their political differences, grievances and party affiliations and to contemplate — as families, as parishes, as councils and clubs and as individuals — the real magnitude of the choice they will make in November.

I encourage people to use the above gift link and read the entire article.

[edited]

[afriblaq]

Somethings up

[originalleftist]

Trump and MAGA revealed what they are at today's rally at Madison Square Garden-a clear attempt to invoke and recreate the infamous pro-Nazi rally there in 1939.

As one would expect, the rally was full of virulent racism and fear-mongering.

Of particular note was one speaker's racist comment comparing Puerto Rico, a US territory in the Caribbean, to garbage, which is getting backlash, and some frantic backpedaling from Florida Republican senatorial candidate Rick Scott.

While Puerto Rico does not have statehood, there are a LOT of Puerto Rican voters elsewhere in the country, particularly in Florida, so this is likely to backfire on Republicans. As of 2020, 13% of all Latino voters were Puerto Rican in origin- the second largest block after Mexican Americans.

[luckydiorxoxo]

––If you vote in one of these ten states, abortion rights are on your ballot!

NEW YORK *flip your ballot* and vote YES on Prop 1, Equal Protection of Law Amendment.

ARIZONA vote YES on Prop 139, Right to Abortion Initiative.

COLORADO vote YES on Amendment 79, Right to Abortion and Health Insurance Coverage Initiative.

FLORIDA vote YES on Amendment 4, Right to Abortion Initiative.

MISSOURI vote YES on Amendment 3, Right to Reproductive Freedom Initiative.

MARYLAND vote YES on Question 1, Right to Reproductive Freedom Amendment.

MONTANA vote YES on Constitutional Initiative 128, Right to Abortion Initiative.

NEBRASKA vote YES on Nebraska Initiative 439 Right to Abortion Initiative ** and vote NO on 434 (this second anti-abortion measure was drafted specifically to confuse voters!)

NEVADA vote YES on Question 6, Right to Abortion Initiative.

SOUTH DAKOTA vote YES on Constitutional Amendment G, Right to Abortion Initiative

[justinspoliticalcorner]

David Smith at The Guardian:

Losing an election for the highest office is a crushing blow that no candidate forgets. But when the American electorate delivers its verdict next week, the personal stakes for Donald Trump will be uniquely high. His fate will hover between the presidency and the threat of prison.

If he claims victory, Trump will be the first convicted criminal to win the White House and gain access to the nuclear codes. If he falls short, the 78-year-old faces more humiliating courtroom trials and potentially even time behind bars. It would be the end of a charmed life in which he has somehow always managed to outrun the law and duck accountability. For Trump, Tuesday is judgment day. “He branded himself as the guy who gets away with it,” said Gwenda Blair, a Trump biographer, adding that, should he lose, “he is facing a lot of moments of reckoning. He could go to jail. He could end up considerably less wealthy than he is. No matter what happens, and no matter whether he wins or loses, there will be a reckoning over his health. Death, ill health, dementia – those are things even he can’t escape.” The property developer and reality TV star has spent his career pushing ethical and legal boundaries to the limit, facing countless investigations, court battles and hefty fines. Worthy of a novel, his has been a life of scandal on a gargantuan scale.

In the 1970s Trump and his father were sued by the justice department for racial discrimination after refusing to rent apartments to Black people in predominantly white buildings. His property and casino businesses, including the Taj Mahal and Trump Plaza, filed for bankruptcy several times in the 1990s and early 2000s. Trump University, a business offering property training courses, faced multiple lawsuits for fraud, misleading marketing and false claims about the quality of its programmes. In 2016 Trump settled for $25m without admitting wrongdoing.

The Donald J Trump Foundation, a charitable organisation, was investigated and sued for allegedly using charitable funds for personal and business expenses. Trump eventually agreed to dissolve the foundation with remaining funds going to charity. Trump and his company were ordered to pay more than $350m in a New York civil fraud trial for artificially inflating his net worth to secure favourable loan terms. He is also known to have paid little to no federal income taxes in specific years which, although technically legal, was seen by some as bordering on unethical.

[...] He became the first president to be impeached twice, first for withholding military aid to pressure Ukraine’s government to investigate his political opponents, then for instigating a coup on 6 January 2021 following his defeat. He also became the subject of not one but four criminal cases, any one of which would have been enough to scuttle the chances of any other White House hopeful. In May Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records relating to a hush-money payment to the adult film performer Stormy Daniels, making him the first former president to be convicted of felony crimes. Sentencing is scheduled for 26 November (the judge delayed it from 18 September after the Republican nominee asked that it wait until after the election). What was billed as the trial of the century has already begun to fade from public consciousness and played a relatively modest role in the election campaign. Jonathan Alter, a presidential biographer who was in court for every day of the trial, recalled: “I’ve covered some big stories over the years but there was nothing like the drama of watching the jury foreperson say, ‘Guilty, guilty, guilty’ 34 times and Donald Trump looking like he was punched in the gut.” Alter, who describes the experience in his new book, American Reckoning, reflects on how Trump has been able to act with impunity for so long. “It’s a combination of luck, galvanised defiance and the credulousness of a large chunk of the American people,” he said. “Demagoguery works. Playing on people’s fears works. It doesn’t work all the time but we can look throughout human history to political figures and how demagoguery and scapegoating ‘the other’ works.”

Alter, who covered the trial for Washington Monthly magazine, added: “We’ve had plenty of demagogues, scoundrels and conmen in politics below the level of president. Trump has been lucky to escape accountability but the United States has been lucky that we haven’t had something like this before. The founders were very worried about it. They felt we would face something like this for sure.” The US’s system of checks and balances has been racing to keep up. Trump was charged by the special counsel Jack Smith with conspiring to overturn the results of his election loss to Joe Biden in the run-up to the January 6 riot at the US Capitol. The former president and 18 others were also charged by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, with taking part in a scheme to overturn his narrow loss in Georgia. Trump was charged again by Smith with illegally retaining classified documents that included nuclear secrets, taken with him from the White House to his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida after he left office in January 2021, and then obstructing government demands to give them back.

With a such a caseload, it was widely assumed that Trump would spend this election shuttling between rallies one day and trials the next. But the courtroom campaign never really happened since, true to past form, he found ways to throw sand in the gears of the legal system and put off his moment of reckoning.

Or he simply got lucky. In Georgia, it emerged that Willis had a romantic relationship with the special prosecutor Nathan Wade, prompting demands that she be removed. Smith’s federal election case was thrown off track for months by a supreme court ruling that presidents have immunity for official actions taken in office. The classified documents case was thrown out by Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, although Smith is appealing and the charges could be reinstated. Such delays have made it easier to forget just how much of an outlier Trump is. Past presidential brushes with the law consisted of Ulysses S Grant being fined for speeding his horse-drawn carriage in Washington and Harry Truman receiving a ticket for driving his car too slowly on the Pennsylvania Turnpike in 1953. Richard Nixon resigned before he could be impeached over the Watergate scandal and was subsequently pardoned by his successor, Gerald Ford. Meanwhile the standard for presidential aspirants has been high. Joe Biden’s first run for the White House fell apart amid allegations that he had plagiarised a speech by Britain’s Labour leader Neil Kinnock. During the 2000 campaign, a last-minute revelation that Republican candidate George W Bush had a drunk driving conviction that he concealed for 24 years generated huge headlines and was seen as a possible gamechanger. Hillary Clinton still blames her 2016 defeat on an FBI investigation into her email server that produced no charges.

For Donald Trump, his run for the “Presidency” is all about avoiding any possible jail time for his indictments and felonies. If he loses, then Trump could be facing more trials and potentially jail time and/or massive fines.

Send Trump to prison, not the White House!

#TrumpForPrison #HarrisWalz2024

[unsolicited-opinions]

[jacks-weird-world]